Arisen : Nemesis (50 page)

It was a trick he’d only read about, from when Delta operator Don Hollenbaugh defended a rooftop in Fallujah, after most of the forty Marines he went in with were wounded. Eventually, he’d been the last guy on top of the building – and prevented it from being overrun by moving among all six defensive positions and singlehandedly keeping 150 attackers at bay.

He had reportedly made some bank shots on insurgents he couldn’t see.

Thanks, Master Sergeant Hollenbaugh,
Kwon thought. Credit where due.

Focusing down on the courtyard again, he saw two robed and armed guys break cover and swing around into Brendan’s rear. They were either determined or desperate. Tracking them, panning smoothly, willing his aim to stay steady in the midst of the lethal chaos and violence that surrounded him, Kwon fired once, then a second time.

And his bolt locked back – empty mag.

He saw both the pursuers go face down in the dirt.

And then he saw Brendan leap into Jake’s hole and out of sight.

Kwon smiled as he pulled his eye back from the scope.

And suddenly he could see, to either side of the scope, and in the middle distance, the billowing back-blast of what was now a properly coordinated RPG volley. They were streaking into his patch of forest in a great airborne wave, and the fat slow rockets only moved about a hundred meters a second – so Kwon could actually see the one that was going to get him.

He didn’t close his eyes, but just watched it come in, his face the exact same mask of warrior calm it always was.

There was nowhere for him to go anyway.

Nowhere but home.

* * *

Seeing Brendan miraculously make it to Jake’s position alive, Todd pulled his eye back from the minigun sight to glance down at the video screen – just in time to see a great blast of flame and smoke and debris go shooting out the back of Kwon’s sniper hide.

Todd couldn’t believe it.

General Kwon was gone.

And still there remained a shitload of fighting between the rest of the team and any possible moment when they might get to grieve for him.

All Todd could do now was dish out some payback.

And try to make sure his brother hadn’t died for nothing.

Alamo

The Stronghold - Godane’s Escape Tunnel

“This is it,” Baxter said. “Last stretch, then we’re out.”

It had been a long and dicey exfil from the underground cells to here. Between gunfights, tunnel collapses, double-crossing al-Shabaab rescuers, more collapsed tunnels that had to be detoured around, not to mention hiding out from roving bands of the enemy, they’d been underground a while.

Now, they were finally on a long straight section of tunnel.

“Wait a minute,” Kate said. “Out where?”

“Outside the walls.” Baxter now realized she’d stopped and he turned back to face her. “This is Godane’s emergency escape passage. It gets us out of the Stronghold. As to where it comes out, I have absolutely no idea, but we’ll deal with that then…”

Kate somehow didn’t like this. But, then again, it wasn’t her plan. And it was probably bad manners to second-guess her rescuers.

The path slanted upward and in a few more minutes they reached a wooden door, tilted forty-five degrees, like a cellar door. Not having any good idea what they were going to find on the other side, they adjusted their grips on their rifles. Baxter unlocked and unbarred the door, then slowly pushed it up and open. He was having to push it through a thicket of brush and foliage, put there to conceal the entrance.

When they both clambered up top, Baxter went right, so Kate went left.

“Clear left,” she said.

When there was no response, she knew there was something wrong.

She spun around again, rifle to her shoulder. Baxter also had his weapon raised – and pointed in the face of a very large and muscular Somali man.

One who Kate recognized:
al-Sîf
.

He didn’t look good – banged up and scuffed, and seeming to favor one side. He had several open slash wounds, where it looked like he had tried to stop the bleeding by packing them with dirt. He had some sort of tree branch, evidently an improvised club, stuck in his belt – and dripping black gore from its end.

But he was also holding a tan rifle with a big scope to his own shoulder – pointing it right back in Baxter’s face.

Every nerve in Kate’s body told her to fire – to act, to operate.

But she could see al-Sîf’s finger curled around his trigger. And, as useful a tool as her M4 was, she also knew it wasn’t a magical device for turning people off. It was just a mechanical tool for putting holes in them. And however carefully she put holes in this guy, she was unlikely to end him before he fired.

And his muzzle was pressed against Baxter’s forehead.

Now the two of them began to rotate, al-Sîf leading, their weapons staying right in each other’s faces. When they had turned 180 degrees, al-Sîf began to climb through the door to the tunnel, never lowering his weapon.

As he moved to pull the door closed again, he paused, smiled at Baxter, and said: “You are a very strange white man.”

Then he closed the door.

And just like that he was gone.

* * *

It was only when they were alone that Kate realized they weren’t alone at all – there were also dead moving through the forest, and more than a few. They hadn’t noticed the two living people yet.

Thank God there was no firing
, Kate thought.

The two of them moved a few meters away to the cover of a thick tree and hunkered down to regroup.

Now Kate heard one big reason the dead were paying no attention to them – the thick and heavy firing and explosions from behind the walls of the Stronghold. They were following that. And the fact that so much fighting was still going on in there suddenly made Kate not very enthusiastic about being out here.

Giving Baxter a look, she wordlessly turned her team radio on. It had been in her vest all this time but they’d been too far underground. Now Kate could hear, up close and personal, her teammates fighting for their lives back inside.

She stood up and spared exactly three words for Baxter.

“I’m going back.”

As she started to move out, Baxter grabbed her arm. He briefly considered telling her that they were all there to get her out – and if she went back inside that would kind of defeat the purpose. But he quickly realized what Brendan had earlier: she wouldn’t give a shit. So he tried another tack.

“They’re picking us up outside.” He stood up and peered around. “We’ve got to find our way to the road that leads out of here to the south… The good news is I think we’re already on the south side. And the road should be that way. We’ve got to be there when the others come out.”

Kate squinted, considered, and listened to a few more seconds of firing and explosions. They weren’t slackening in the least.

She pulled her arm free and headed out.

“Goddammit,” Baxter muttered.

He watched her back disappear.

Then he looked around at the vague menacing convergence of increasing numbers of dead moving through the forest, some stumbling but many running. And what flashed through his mind was a scenario where he had to stab one who noticed him, then shoot another – and then quickly became a one-man singularity out here in the forest alone.

And he could also hear for himself: the firing inside was still going full-bore.

“Goddammit,” he said again, dashing over and getting to the tunnel door just as she was pulling it closed again.

Instead, he shut it behind both of them.

They were both going back.

* * *

Jake and Brendan lay side by side, trying to stay underneath the murderous sheets of fire that streaked over their heads and smashed into the dirt around them. They were also trying to stay in a corner of the shell hole that kept them covered from the enemy on the walls that Todd and Zack couldn’t suppress.

They were in a very narrow corner, and it was shrinking.

“Good job, sir,” Jake said. “Now we’re both here in the goddamned Alamo.”

Brendan snorted in amusement. “The Alamo had walls and a roof.”

Jake was pretty sure all Brendan had accomplished was keeping him from having to die alone.

Which, actually, was worth everything.

* * *

With Baxter navigating, and with fewer jihadis alive to bother them down below, he and Kate made their way back to the building with the north gun truck in a few minutes. They climbed the stairs to ground level then picked through the wreckage until they reached the vehicle.

The minigun up top was still firing – until it ran dry.

Zack was just turning around to reload when Kate knocked on the side of his turret, and he almost jumped out of his skin. He dropped down inside, opened the door, and glowed with relief. Baxter, his best friend, was still alive.

And, somehow, against all the odds, they had rescued Kate.

She did not herself look relieved. “Sitrep,” she said.

Zack shook his head. “I’ve gotta get the minigun back up. Get in here, help me reload, and I’ll tell you.”

As Kate nodded and climbed in after him, Zack started to put her in the picture.

And it wasn’t good. Both their leaders were pinned down out in the open.

* * *

Both Jake and Brendan knew they couldn’t live long in the position they were in. They were going to have to make a breakout.

Brendan looked over at his team sergeant. “Can you walk?”

“I’ll manage.”

Brendan nodded. Then, inexplicably, he smiled. Eyes gleaming from out of his dirt-, soot-, and blood-streaked face, he said, “Wait a minute – you didn’t see Lefors out there did you?”

Jake couldn’t help but laugh. He got the reference –
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
, 1969. Unfortunately, these were Butch and Sundance’s last lines before running out to be gunned down by half the Bolivian army. “Lefors? No.”

Brendan nodded. “Oh, good. For a moment there I thought we were in trouble.”

Then a voice came on the radio they really didn’t want to hear.

“Jake, Bren, Kate. Stay put. I’m moving to you.”

Wingman

The Stronghold - Middle of the Courtyard

Zack tried his damnedest to stop her. Ditto Baxter.

Ditto Todd and Jake, both shouting at her over the radio.

All were apoplectic that Kate would risk her life this way – on what was basically a suicide mission, and after all they had done and sacrificed to get her out of there safely. Not to mention that she was doing it on behalf of two men who were probably dead already.

Only one man realized they were all treating her like a princess to be rescued – and that Kate was never going to put up with it, any more than they should be doing it in the first place.

“Kate, Bren. If you’re pushing out, stick to the north wall. You’ll not only have some cover but you can do a hell of a lot more to support us from there, rather than just hanging out in this hole with us.”

“Roger that. Moving.”

Lying on his back beside him, Jake gave Brendan an unamused look.

Brendan shrugged. “Either she’s a member of this team, or she isn’t.”

Jake couldn’t argue with that, so he didn’t.

And even in his charged-up emotional state, Jake recognized one thing worth admiring in Brendan’s order: he trusted her now. Completely. After all the hard work and graft Kate had done to become a full and trusted member of this tight-knit team… she had done it now.

She was in – completely.

And now there was a good chance she would go to her death embodying the most important aspect of their bond: you always supported your SF brothers.

And you never left one behind.

* * *

“Okay, fuck all this,” Todd said aloud to no one as he dropped out of the turret, climbed into the driver’s seat, and cranked the engine.

The whole point of keeping the gun trucks under cover was so they wouldn’t be taken out – and could provide the covering fire needed to keep everyone else alive long enough to complete the mission and exfil. But if everyone got killed anyway, there was damned little point in keeping the trucks safe.

True, they also kind of needed the vehicles to drive out of there. But on current trends one would be plenty to carry the survivors.

But those weren’t the real reasons Todd left cover. He did it because if his beloved battle buddy was hanging her unarmored ass out there in the steel wind to try to save the team leaders, the least he could do was brave the fire himself – and support her in his fully-armored monster car-crushing truck, which also had more firepower than a rifle battalion.

Not bothering to turn it around, Todd just put his elbow on the seat back, jammed it in reverse, stomped the gas, and went blasting out of his alley ass-end first. A highly skilled and well-trained tactical driver, he dodged parked vehicles, low sheds, and yawning shell holes, and less than thirty seconds later skidded to a halt one foot to the south-east of Jake and Bren’s hole.

Those two were now completely shielded by the truck from one side.

They had Zack shooting to cover them from the other one.

And Kate was coming online between the buildings on the north wall. In theory, her flexibility of maneuver should provide even better protection for Jake and Brendan as they tried to make it back across open ground to the north gun truck.

Todd yanked the parking brake, climbed into the turret, got on the minigun – then flipped his viewport out on the side and shouted down to his commander and team sergeant.

“Say – how long exactly do you guys plan on keeping me here with my face hanging out? Because I’m about to be real popular.”

He slammed the viewport shut without waiting for an answer.

They got it. Todd was sitting in a massive bullet and RPG magnet.

And it was positioned at the very center of the in-facing ring of fire that was the al-Shabaab Stronghold.

* * *

Kate continued to thread through the maze of structures that abutted the north wall. She was all alone again. And if someone jumped in her six, she was in big trouble. Her only defense was to keep moving – fast.